God is my Father

'When you pray say, "Our Father"' (Luke 11:2)

Things were difficult in the prison in Czechoslovakia where I was imprisoned for Bible smuggling; in the first few months it seemed as if God did not answer any of my prayers. When I prayed for food, there was none, when I prayed that my wife would come, she was not allowed a visa to visit me - it seemed that every prayer that I prayed, God said no. I began to despair. We had to get up at 6.00 am every morning and sit for hours on a wooden stool embedded with nails. It was torture. In the first six months I wasn't allowed out of my cell - my food and my toilet were in the cell. I lost so much weight. However, I would try to pray in those early hours before the guards brought the mouldy black bread and foul tasting, drug laced drink which was our only breakfast.

One morning when I had been three months in that cell, I cried out in desperation that I could not pray anymore because, I said, "Oh God, every time I pray, You say no! When I want the food parcels my family send, or a visit from my wife, or for me to be found not guilty in the court and be set free, always the answer is no! I don't know how to pray anymore, everything I ask for, it's no!" I sat there, not knowing what to do. "Oh God, if You don't hear me, I'd rather die, because life has no purpose, no meaning if You don't answer me." While I was still saying, "Oh God, I cannot pray anymore", I remembered the words in the Bible (I had no Bible in the prison - it was forbidden) when the disciples had asked Jesus how to pray, and He said, "When you pray say..." - and I began hesitantly to say those words, 'Our Father' - but as I did so, I began to argue, I cannot say 'our', that's plural - I'm alone in here, no family, no friends, no believers, how can I speak in the plural? I have to say MY Father. Suddenly I knew the reality of those words, He is mine - He is my Father!

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Your Father's Love

The Lord is like a Father to His children, tender and compassionate. He is mindful of us, watching our every step. God has promised to take care of you 'as a father cares for his children'. The Bible even says that God knows every sparrow that falls to the ground and even the hairs on your head are numbered - that is how close His relationship with you is! God wants us to come to Him for help. He will hear even the faintest cry. Just as a mother learns how to recognise the different cries of her baby: she knows when the baby is hungry, or tired, or needs a nappy change, or just needs comfort, so God recognises the need you express by your every cry for help!

Jesus told us to call God 'our Father', and in the Bible He Himself is described as a 'Son of God'. We are sons and daughters of God! This is why we have the right to approach Him and talk to Him personally, as we would with any father. The miracle of the Gospel which Jesus brought in the New Testament is of a direct access to God. In the Old Testament it was necessary to come to God through a priest, but the good news of the New Testament is that God sent His Son to be born as a baby, to live and work as one of us, to show that all the barriers are broken down and we have direct access to a Heavenly Father. For this reason, when Jesus died, the veil of the Jewish Temple, which separated between God and man and could only be accessed by a holy priest, was split in two, thus opening the way to God without hindrance!

Deuteronomy 4:29-30 says, 'If from where you are…when you are in distress and all these things have happened to you…if you seek Him you will find Him!'

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